A SYMBOLIC PAINTING

We have reached the end of these short biographical notes. Rogerio Martins, the artist from Pernambuco, helped us start them with one painting, and now he is helping us close them with another. Inspired by our suggestion, he thus depicted Frei Daniel's life. Using brilliant and warm colors, the artist places him in the foreground of the painting. Frei Daniel is sitting in the chair of Tucunduba, which he claimed to prefer to the chair he used while he was Father Superior of Prata. His face is clearly marked by the disease, yet he manages a weak smile. His hands, which are covered with sores and wrapped in bandages, are quite expressive. The painting is, more or less, a representation of several photographs taken of Frei Daniel during those long years of pain and sufferings. What strikes us, however, is what appears in the background amidst the many different shades of the green found in the rain forest. This is where Frei Daniel spent most of his life. There, in the midst of the lush vegetation, two structures, one within the other, arise like a vision to frame the disfigured image of the Friar. The larger one is a house, the name of which is clearly visible: Retiro S. Francisco. Under that name, as if emerging through the open windows and door, we can see the entire length of one side of a church. It is the Church of S. Antonio of the Colonia do Prata. The House and the Church, one within the other, represent Frei Daniel's life as a missionary serving God and his people. The Retiro S. Francisco is bigger and more conspicuous, because it represents the high point of Frei Daniel's life when, during ten endless years of being ravaged, little by little, by the disease of leprosy, he gives himself completely to God and to the people around him. The figure of St. Francis, for whom the house of Tucunduba is named, acquires a tremendous significance in this story, because Frei Daniel's missionary life began when he was ordained in the Sanctuary of S. Francisco das Chagas in Canindé (Cearà), and the following year, when he celebrated his first Mass there. Subsequently, his productive years spent at the church of S. Antonio of the Colonia do Prata parallel the greater fame of St. Anthony as compared to St. Francis. This was when, as Father Superior, he was an administrator, an admired businessman and a great achiever. Then, when he is stricken with the disease of leprosy, Frei Daniel takes shelter in the loving embrace of St. Francis who, in Brazil, is knows as "das Chagas" ("with stigmata"), the Father of Suffering, like Jesus. The significance of this coincidence is extraordinary. Frei Daniel began his life as a missionary with St. Francis shepherding him through the difficulties of adjusting to a new life in an unfamiliar land. He ends his life on earth in the loving embrace of St. Francis with the promise of an eternal life free of suffering.